Morphology-controlled nanomaterials such as silica play a crucial role in the development of technologies for addressing challenges in the fields of energy, environment and health. After the discovery of Stöber silica, followed by the discovery of mesoporous silica materials, such as MCM-41 and SBA-15, a significant surge in the design and synthesis of nanosilica with various sizes, shapes, morphologies and textural properties (surface area, pore size and pore volume) has been observed in recent years. The efficiency of these materials for various applications is mainly due to their porous structure, which allows guest molecules to disperse on their large internal surfaces. However, due to small tubular pores, accessibility of the surface inside the pores is restricted, causing significant mass transport issues. Additionally, the small pore mouth gets blocked when loaded with guest molecules, further reducing the accessibility of the internal surface. Stability was another critical challenge that these materials faced. Thus, high surface area silica materials with improved internal surface accessibility, tunable pore sizes and pore volumes, controllable particle sizes, and importantly, improved stability were needed for various applications.

Our notable invention in this field is dendritic fibrous nanosilica (DFNS), also known as KCC-1. Our patented material possesses a unique fibrous morphology, unlike the tubular porous structure of various conventional silica materials. It has a high surface area with improved accessibility to the internal surface, tunable pore size and pore volume, controllable particle size, and importantly, improved stability. We have successfully used them for various applications, such as nanocatalysis, photocatalysis and CO2 capture.

After our discovery, a large number of reports (around 200) appeared in the literature citing its successful use in a range of applications, such as catalysis, solar energy harvesting (photocatalysis, solar cells, etc.), energy storage, self-cleaning antireflective coatings, surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based ultra-sensitive sensors, CO2 capture and biomedical applications (drug delivery, protein and gene delivery, bioimaging, photothermal ablation, and Ayurvedic and radiotherapeutics drug delivery, among others).

These reports indicate that dendritic fibrous nanosilica has excellent potential as an alternative to popular silica materials such as MCM-41, SBA-15, Stöber silica, and mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs), among others.

In the nano-catalysis (NanoCat) laboratory, we are designing and synthesizing various nano-materials (silica, metal oxides, metals, MOF etc) with specific shapes, sizes and morphologies and then evaluating their use as a nano-catalysts for the development of sustainable protocols for various processes like photocatalysis, CO2 capture and conversion to fine chemicals, environmental remediation as well as C-H activation, C-C coupling, oxidation, metathesis, hydrogenolysis, hydrogenation reactions.

​A guiding hypothesis is that catalytic efficiency (activity, kinetics, selectivity and stability) can be controlled by tuning the morphology of nanomaterials/nanocatalysts.